


Not the Time or Place

by fyeahblackturtlenecks



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Awkward Flirting, Drunk Carver makes things awkward, Hawke's gender is up to the reader, Modern AU, Other, yeah that's about it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-14
Updated: 2015-01-14
Packaged: 2018-03-07 14:14:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,482
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3175774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fyeahblackturtlenecks/pseuds/fyeahblackturtlenecks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carver gets into a bar fight, and the consequences aren't exactly what Hawke expected. (Modern AU)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Not the Time or Place

**Author's Note:**

> This is complete and utter crack and also a Christmas gift for tumblr user zevranstattoo, because I promised them a fic for Christmas and then writer's block happened and now it's almost a month late.

“I hope you remember this in the morning so you can thank me.”

Carver lets out a noncommittal groan, letting the hand holding a wad of bloodstained tissues to his nose drop to his lap.

Your hands tighten on the steering wheel. “If you get blood on any part of this car, I am leaving your drunk ass and its broken nose on the side of the road.” Your patience has been utterly drained, and driving your drunk brother to the emergency room at 12:33 AM is not helping. You reach across to the glove compartment and pull it open to retrieve the small packet of tissues there, tossing it into Carver’s lap. “Stuff a few tissues up your nose if you have to, just please keep your bodily fluids to yourself.”

“...think it’s broken,” Carver slurred, ripping open the packet and holding its entire contents up to his face.

“Of course it’s broken,” you say. “That’s what happens when you get into bar fights for no reason.”

“He insulted me! Wouldn't give me my drink,” Carver argued, wincing at the pain of making any kind of facial expression.

“He was the bartender, and he was cutting you off.” You pull into the emergency room’s parking lot and resist the urge to run the car into one of the hospital’s brick wall. “You do realize that we’re banned for life now, right? The whole family? Have fun telling Gamlen that you've gotten him banned from his favorite place to gamble at, because I’m not doing it for you.”

“Don’t really care what Gamlen thinks,” says Carver slowly,

“You will when you’re sober,”  you mutter, half under your breath, and wonder how exactly you are going to explain all of this. “Get out of the car, and take the tissues with you.”

As Carver clambers out of his seat, you are slightly stricken by the feeling of being intensely grateful that you were the designated driver this time. Carver looks awful, and you’re glad you haven’t joined him in doing so as he slumps against the side of the car. Otherwise, there would be nobody to follow him around and make sure he didn't hurt himself walking into a wall. _He got into this mess himself_ , you think, but you still feel a pang of sympathy for him and his bleeding nose. With a sigh you pull him away from his resting place at the side of the car and sling one of his arms around your shoulder. He wobbles even with your support, and you wonder what exactly he’d been taking shots of, and whether or not it was your responsibility to keep track.

Dragging him into the building is not as difficult as you had expected it to be, and you are by no means the most surprisingly injured people in crowded waiting room. “You picked a great time to get punched in the face,” you say to Carver as you accept the reality of likely being here until dawn. “Stay here while I get everything taken care of, and for the love of God please do not punch any more people.” Carver makes a small, pained noise as he drops into a chair, and you pretend it’s him agreeing to comply.

~~~

By the time the forms have been given to you, it’s already been forty-five minutes and you've been told that it’s going to be at least another hour before you’ll be seen by a doctor. When you get back to the seat you’d had Carver save for you, you find him trying to chat up an unfortunate young lady with what is clearly a dislocated shoulder. “Leave her alone, Carver, she’s not in the mood,” you say, falling heavily into the chair. A special one-in-the-morning kind of tired pools at the edges of your eye sockets as you start filling out the forms, with occasional sluggish input from Carver. He’s passed the “loud drunk” phase and started inching towards the “tired drunk” phase, and you have to give him a shake every twenty or so minutes to keep him awake. The coffee machine in the far corner of the room proves to be increasingly distracting as you work your way through the pages of blanks to fill in.

“I just need you to sign here.” You hold out the packet and tap the blank with the pen to get his attention. “I’m getting us coffee. Try to stay awake while I’m gone.”

There’s a line for the machine, and you’d curse your luck if you could just keep your eyes open long enough. It's only about three people, but it feels hours before it moves up another person. The person in front of you, a doctor in a wrinkled coat who looks at least as wrecked as you feel, steps aside and it takes you a while to realize that he's gesturing for you to pass him. "Please, you look like you're about to fall over," he says, running a hand through his blond hair. He tugs at the ponytail in the back. Strands still fall into his eyes.

"So do you," you reply. "Just go get your coffee, yeah? You're first in line anyway and you have..." You force a yawn back down where it came from. "You probably have...lives to save and please just go get your caffeine." Somewhere in your sluggish mind is the thought that you've already been talking to him for too long, and he looks like he was in a hurry before he decided to try to be nice, and you kind of want to keep looking at him but he really probably needs to leave.

He sighs and starts plugging quarters into the machine, giving you a grateful look as the caffeinated sludge starts to pour out into the little paper cup. The silence gets awkward, and you're almost grateful when he takes his coffee and leaves, but you don't mind watching him do it.

"Look at her go..."

You jump at the sudden presence behind you and drop the quarter you were about put into the machine. "You were supposed to stay where you were," you said, heart still hammering as you bend down to look for the coin--it's rolled under the machine now, and your yawn would have been annoyed if yawns had a tone to them. You don't have any more change to spend on keeping yourself awake. "Thanks for that, Carver. Really appreciate it," you say as you stand again.

Carver doesn't respond. He looks slightly more sober, but the dark circles that you can see forming under his eyes mean that he's not any more coherent than he was when you got here. "No, really look at her," he says, staring pointedly at the doctor you were just talking to. "Look at her ass...cutie with a booty!" he says, grinning ear to ear briefly before whining and dropping the expression for a small smile. You're glad you aren't holding the coffee you were about to get because you would have dropped it laughing. Some of the people in the chairs closest to you give the both of you confused looks. The doctor just keeps walking until he disappears into one of the exam rooms. "What's so funny? Look at it, it's perfect..."

"..Carver," you say between deep breaths as you try to get yourself back under control. "Carver, that's a man," more laughter, "unless you have something to share with the class?"

Carver goes beet red and you have to force the down the rest of your laughter,making some awkward choking sounds in the process. "Shit...oh shit, Hawke, why didn't you tell me?"

"You're the one who came up to me with your opinion on his backside, I didn't know you were going to voice it," you respond, taking him by the arm and leading him back to your chairs.

"If you tell anyone..." Carver trails off, slumping into this seat and dropping his head into the his hands. "Ow, shit..." He lifts it again, poking at his swollen and bloodstained nose with a tissue. You notice that it's started to turn blue around the edges.

"I won't, I promise," you pat him on the back reassuringly and with you'd recorded the moment for posterity.

"Carver Hawke?" calls a nurse from the doorway of one of the exam rooms.

"That would be him," you answer, pulling Carver up out of his seat again. "Sorry, he's still a bit drunk."

The nurse steps aside, giving still-wobbly Carver a wide berth.

"Oh...it's you," says the doctor, and you wonder if you should laugh or fall through the floor into Hell.

"Oh God no," Carver says, slumping into your shoulder. You push him back upright with a smile.

"Which one of us are you talking about?" you ask as you nudge Carver closer to the exam table.

"Both, I suppose?" his voice is rough with exhaustion but his eyes are still bright and golden and his ears are tinged red from what can only be embarrassment. “Um...hello. I’m Anders, nice to meet you…” he holds out a hand to Carver, who doesn't or can’t move for embarrassment, you can’t really tell. To make it at least marginally less awkward, you step forward and shake it. His hand is warm and slightly dry.

“That’s Carver, and I just go by Hawke,” you say. “Excuse him, he’s just a bit drunk.”

"I'm not gay, I swear," Carver interjects. Your desire to put your head through a wall multiplies exponentially. He sits down on the exam table and scowls at the floor.

“You don’t have to be exclusively gay to appreciate my backside, but alright.” Anders pulls on a new pair of latex gloves and moves to stand in front of Carver, eyebrows drawing together as he inspects the swollen mess of his nose. “What exactly happened here?”

“Assholes,” says Carver, and you suppress a groan.

“He got himself punched in the face,” you clarify.

“Why’d you have to make it sound like I was asking for it?” Carver whines.

You place a hand on his shoulder for emphasis. “Because, dear brother, you kind of were.”

“Do I...want to know?” Anders says, turning to you for an answer, and you have to firmly remind yourself that you shouldn't be thinking about maybe asking out the cute doctor when he has your brother’s broken nose to worry about.   
“No, you really don’t,” you say plainly.

“Alright then,” Anders turns back to Carver, lightly prodding at the sides of his nose. Carver flinches. “Yeah, that’s going to have to be set…” he mutters. “This’ll only take a minute.” He turns and reaches into one of the cabinets, pulling out a needle and a bottle of clear liquid.

“Is that a needle?” Carver whispers. You wonder how loud someone can be before it can no longer be called whispering.

Anders beats you to the explanation and you wonder how he can be so calm and collected when it’s almost two in the morning and your drunk brother is pouting in his office, and when he’s presumably been dealing with all kinds of people for who knows how long. “It’s just a local anesthetic,” he says as he finishes filling the needle. “Please hold still…”  
Carver flinches as the needle nears his face and you put a hand on his shoulder, in part to keep him still and in part because you feel kind of bad for him--broken nose, needles in his face, doesn’t exactly sound like a fun experience. Anders gives you a knowing glance before directing his attention back to Carver, and his eyebrows furrow again in concentration. “And now we wait,” he says, dropping the empty needle into a hazardous waste container.

It’s awkward. Carver’s sitting there nervously poking at his face and frowning as it slowly goes numb, Anders is scribbling something onto a clipboard. You briefly wonder if his handwriting is as bad as stereotype would suggest. You look around the room, trying not to stare at anything and especially trying not to stay at anyone, and your gaze falls onto a framed picture of a bright orange tabby kitten, yarn tangled around its paws.

“Is that your cat?” you ask, because the silence is becoming unbearable and you don’t know what else to do.

Anders puts the clipboard down and glances at the photo. A small smile brightens his exhausted face as he reaches over and picks it up. “Yes, he’s mine. Ser Pounce-a-lot.” The smile widens, and you find yourself smiling back.

“Cute name.”

“It’s definitely fitting,” he says. “You’re a cat person?”

“Not really, but they’re cute. I have a dog,” You pull your phone out and show him the picture of your dog that you've set as your wallpaper.

“He’s adorable,” says Anders. “What’s his name?”

“Dog. I’m not very creative,” you answer.

“At least it’s true to form.”

“Yeah, I guess…”

And it’s awkward again as the conversation dies out, at least until Carver loudly announces, “I can’t feel most of my face.”

“Okay, then please hold still....” Anders leans forward, placing his fingers on either side of Carver’s nose and pushing the bones into place with a small clicking noise. “And you’re going to need to keep this on for a few weeks,” he explains, fitting what looks like a plastic shell over the bridge of Carver’s nose.   
“Still can’t feel my face,” Carver says with a frown.

“It’ll be a while before you can, and take some painkillers when you do.”

“I’ll remind him,” you say. Anders looks a bit relieved at that, because Carver seems to have checked out entirely. He’s started poking at his cheeks again, as if he expects to feel something other than numb.

“And, uh…” Anders pulls a sticky note out of a drawer and scribbles something down on it. “Just call my cell if you have any questions. If you just call the hospital, it’ll take forever to get through to me…yeah, just...call me.”

As you take the paper, you can feel your face getting warmer and you question the setting in which this is happening--who flirts with the guy who just set their drunk brother’s broken nose? “I’ll make sure to do that,” you say as Carver makes his way over.

“And...these are yours, you can just talk to the receptionist about that…” Anders hands you a few papers.

“Thank you,” you say, leading Carver out of the room.

“Did you just get the hot doctor’s number?” asks Carver on the way out, and stops in his tracks. “Oh, shit, you know I didn’t mean that!”

“You’re the one who just made it awkward for yourself, not me,” you point out, but you keep to yourself your thought of _Well, he’s not exactly wrong._


End file.
